{"id":89,"date":"2009-02-13T10:16:41","date_gmt":"2009-02-13T10:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/a-reporters-account-of-an-lds.html"},"modified":"2009-02-13T10:16:41","modified_gmt":"2009-02-13T10:16:41","slug":"a-reporters-account-of-an-lds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/a-reporters-account-of-an-lds.html","title":{"rendered":"A reporter&#8217;s account of an LDS Sunday service"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is always helpful to try and see yourself through someone else&#8217;s eyes. So it&#8217;s worthwhile to read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/belief\/2009\/feb\/09\/religion-mormon-latter-day\">a British journalist&#8217;s account of attending an LDS Sunday meeting<\/a> (a monthly testimony meeting, not the usual weekly sacrament meeting) at the Hyde Park Ward in London. It appears to be one in a series of similar visits to various denominations. The tone is balanced, although the journalist doesn&#8217;t try very hard to hide his general disdain for religion. That&#8217;s okay &mdash; I don&#8217;t try very hard to hide my general disdain for journalists.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Anyway, here are a few things the reporter noticed during his visit (quotations in italics) with my comments.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>The chapel is bright, modern and completely unadorned. &#8230; There&#8217;s a marked low-church sensibility.<\/em> Yes, it&#8217;s easy to forget how &#8220;completely unadorned&#8221; LDS chapels are until you visit a few other churches in your neighborhood.<\/li>\n<li><em>The bishop and priests, in suits, greet many of the congregation personally as they walk to take their places at the front.<\/em> I have visited a variety of other denominations (in the US) and the pastors generally greet congregants before the meeting and visit with them after the meeting. So I&#8217;m guessing this sense of surprise that Mormons weren&#8217;t cold and aloof reflects British expectations about how church officials are &#8220;supposed&#8221; to act.<\/li>\n<li><em>The service kicks off with the opening hymn, &#8220;Because I have been given much&#8221;. It&#8217;s a typical ploddy, churchy tune, and for a moment this could be any Christian service &#8211; except that, oddly, we don&#8217;t stand up to sing.<\/em> Yeah, typically people sing &#8220;churchy tunes&#8221; in church. It&#8217;s church, not the pub or a football match.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I can think of a couple of distinctive features of LDS meetings that might be added to the list. The three-hour block. The Sunday meeting marathon certainly deserves comment (the reporter apparently did not choose to stay for Sunday School and priesthood meeting). And I for one am proud of LDS parking lots, ample free parking being one of the few aspects of the American Dream that is not threatened by the present economic crisis.<\/p>\n<p>Anything else visitors (or regular attendees) find distinctive about LDS meetings or chpaels?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is always helpful to try and see yourself through someone else&#8217;s eyes. So it&#8217;s worthwhile to read a British journalist&#8217;s account of attending an LDS Sunday meeting (a monthly testimony meeting, not the usual weekly sacrament meeting) at the Hyde Park Ward in London. It appears to be one in a series of similar&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lds-places"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A reporter&#039;s account of an LDS Sunday service - Mormon Inquiry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/a-reporters-account-of-an-lds.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A reporter&#039;s account of an LDS Sunday service - Mormon Inquiry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It is always helpful to try and see yourself through someone else&#8217;s eyes. So it&#8217;s worthwhile to read a British journalist&#8217;s account of attending an LDS Sunday meeting (a monthly testimony meeting, not the usual weekly sacrament meeting) at the Hyde Park Ward in London. It appears to be one in a series of similar&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/a-reporters-account-of-an-lds.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mormon Inquiry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-02-13T10:16:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dave Banack\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A reporter's account of an LDS Sunday service - Mormon Inquiry","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/a-reporters-account-of-an-lds.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A reporter's account of an LDS Sunday service - Mormon Inquiry","og_description":"It is always helpful to try and see yourself through someone else&#8217;s eyes. So it&#8217;s worthwhile to read a British journalist&#8217;s account of attending an LDS Sunday meeting (a monthly testimony meeting, not the usual weekly sacrament meeting) at the Hyde Park Ward in London. It appears to be one in a series of similar&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/a-reporters-account-of-an-lds.html","og_site_name":"Mormon Inquiry","article_published_time":"2009-02-13T10:16:41+00:00","author":"Dave Banack","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/a-reporters-account-of-an-lds.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/a-reporters-account-of-an-lds.html","name":"A reporter's account of an LDS Sunday service - Mormon Inquiry","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-02-13T10:16:41+00:00","dateModified":"2009-02-13T10:16:41+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/2f677c4d0aa56d33221bfcb682f43c5f"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/a-reporters-account-of-an-lds.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/a-reporters-account-of-an-lds.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2009\/02\/a-reporters-account-of-an-lds.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A reporter&#8217;s account of an LDS Sunday service"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/","name":"Mormon Inquiry","description":"Mormon News and Culture","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/2f677c4d0aa56d33221bfcb682f43c5f","name":"Dave Banack","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7ae\/7aebc9e4453d630505d00cebd1d8aa38x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7ae\/7aebc9e4453d630505d00cebd1d8aa38x96.jpg","caption":"Dave Banack"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/author\/dbanack"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/173"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}